Philip K. Dick: Difference between revisions

For the newly prospective or particularly insane reader, as a lot of PKD's works were guided by the [[Reality Subtext]] of his life, reading his works in the order they were published (or written) from oldest to most recent gives probably the best overall understanding of the development of his mind and ideas over time <ref> with the added advantage that it prepares the reader for the continuously escalating levels of [[Mind Screw]] and paranoia that occur in his later books</ref>. However, be warned that trying to read them all in progressive succession ''may'' [[Mind Screw|break your mind]]. Literally.

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* [[Adaptation Expansion]]: ''[[The Adjustment Bureau]]'' is based on a short story ("Adjustment Team") that was only a few pages long.

* [[Meaningful Name]] - Palmer [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch]], Felix Buckman in ''Flow My Tears'', etc.

** In ''A Maze Of Death'', you have the subverted dumb-blonde "Susie Smart", the lying hypochondriac "Dr. Babble", and the [[Jerkass]] bully "Ignatz Thugg".

* [[Mental Story]]: ''Eye in the Sky'' takes place in a sort of shared mental world, with the current most-dominant personality warping it to their prejudices and worldview.

* [[Mind Screw]]

** Could be argued to have if not invented, at least cemented the trope in popular media.

** His short stories tend to be saner and less weird, even the one about a religious movement of people who use a special electronic box to empathetically link to a religious figure who is currently undergoing an exhausting journey. [[Paranoia Fuel|Supposedly]]. In fact, some of them are humorous ("The War with the Fnools", in which aliens attempt to exterminate the race by disguising themselves as human - if not for the fact they're midgets).

* [[Ontological Mystery]]

* [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: Due to the incredibly dark, reality-challenging, and ideologically expansive nature of most of his works, it is almost ''impossible'' to create a faithful adaptation of one of PKD's full novels. The entire novel simply can't be pulled down into a 3-hour or less movie. For this reason, a lot of his shorter stories rather than full-length novels are made into movies: ''[[Minority Report]]'', ''[[Total Recall]]'', ''[[Paycheck]]'' etc. There are only two movies based on his actual novels that were well-made and critically-acclaimed: ''[[Blade Runner]]'', based on ''Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?'', which, even on a severely curtailed script Ridley Scott travelled through [[Development Hell|Pre- and Post-production Hell]] with; and the ''[[A Scanner Darkly]]'' adaptation, which was incredibly faithful to the book but mostly because A) the director was [[Crazy Awesome|incredibly creative]], and B) it is set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]. God help the director who takes it into his mind to tackle VALIS.